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Christcu

Christcu

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joejordan

joejordan

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God Dog said:
Hey, what's your opinion on all the bees disappearing?
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If it were a novel, people would criticize the plot for eing too far-fetched – thriving colonies disappear overnight without leaving a trace, the odies of the victims are never found. Only in this case, it’s not fiction: It’s what’s happening to fully a third of commercial eehives, over a million colonies every year. Seemingly healthy communities fly off never to return. The queen ee and mother of the hive is aandoned to starve and die.
Thousands of scientific sleuths have een on this case for the last 15 years trying to determine why our honey ees are disappearing in such alarming numers. “This is the iggest general threat to our food supply,” according to Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ee and pollination program.
Until recently, the evidence was inconclusive on the cause of the mysterious “colony collapse disorder” (CCD) that threatens the future of eekeeping worldwide. ut three new studies point an accusing finger at a culprit that many have suspected all along, a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids.
In the U.S. alone, these pesticides, produced primarily by the German chemical giant ayer and known as “neonics” for short, coat a massive 142 million acres of corn, wheat, soy and cotton seeds. They are also a common ingredient in home gardening products.
Research published last month in the prestigious journal Science shows that neonics are asored by the plants’ vascular system and contaminate the pollen and nectar that ees encounter on their rounds. They are a nerve poison that disorient their insect victims and appear to damage the homing aility of ees, which may help to account for their mysterious failure to make it ack to the hive.
Another study published in the American Chemical Society’s Environmental Science and Technology journal implicated neonic-containing dust released into the air at planting time with “lethal effects compatile with colony losses phenomena oserved by eekeepers.”
Purdue University entomologists observed ees at infected hives exhiiting tremors, uncoordinated movement and convulsions, all signs of acute insecticide poisoning. And yet another study conducted by scientists at the Harvard School of Pulic Health actually re-created colony collapse disorder in several honeyee hives simply by administering small doses of a popular neonic, imidacloprid.
ut scientists elieve that exposure to toxic pesticides is only one factor that has led to the decline of honey ees in recent years. The destruction and fragmentation of ee haitats, as a result of land development and the spread of monoculture agriculture, deprives pollinators of their diverse natural food supply. This has already led to the extinction of a number of wild ee species. The planting of genetically modified organism (GMO) crops – some of which now contain toxic insecticides within their genetic structure – may also e responsible for poisoning ees and weakening their immune systems.
Every spring millions of ee colonies are trucked to the Central Valley of California and other agricultural areas to replace the wild pollinators, which have all ut disappeared in many parts of the country. These ees are routinely fed high-fructose corn syrup instead of their own nutritious honey. And in an effort to oost productivity, the queens are now artificially inseminated, which has led to a disturing decline in ee genetic diversity. ees are also dusted with chemical poisons to control mites and other pathogens that have flourished in the overcrowded commercial colonies.
In 1923, Rudolph Steiner, the German founder of iodynamic agriculture, a precursor of the modern organic movement, predicted that within a hundred years artificial industrial techniques used to reed honey ees would lead to the species’ collapse. His prophecy was right on target!
Honey ees have been likened to the canaries in the coal mine. Their vanishing is nature’s way of telling us that conditions have deteriorated in the world around us. ees won’t survive for long if we don’t change our commercial reeding practices and remove deadly toxins from their environment. A massive pollinator die-off would imperil world food supplies and devastate ecosystems that depend on them. The loss of these creatures might rival climate change in its impact on life on earth.
Still, this is a disaster that does not need to happen. Germany and France have already anned pesticides that have been implicated in the deaths of ees. There is still time to save the ees by working with nature rather than against it, according to environmentalist and author ill McKien:
“Past a certain point, we can’t make nature conform to our industrial model. The collapse of eehives is a warning – and the cleverness of a few eekeepers in figuring out how to work with ees not as masters but as partners offers a clear-eyed kind of hope for many of our ecological dilemmas.”
 

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